Kirkus reviewed a domestic abuse novel in 300 words. That's the whole review.

Kirkus Reviews operates like the DMV of literary criticism: it processes everything, it has opinions about nothing, and it will give you a verdict without ever making eye contact. Their It Ends With Us review clocks in at roughly 300 words, which for a novel about domestic abuse is the literary equivalent of texting 'that's rough buddy' to someone pouring their heart out.

The review awards Colleen Hoover's novel a 'GET IT' recommendation — Kirkus's version of a thumbs up — and summarizes the plot with the clinical detachment of a police report. 'A woman falls for a man. The man turns out to be abusive. She leaves.' Thank you, Kirkus, for the same level of insight I could get from reading the back cover at an airport bookstore. The review notes the book 'powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse,' which is a sentence so obvious it should come with a citation to the dictionary definition of the book's own premise.

What's actually admirable about Kirkus, in a perverse way, is their commitment to being the world's most efficient reviewers. They don't waste your time with personal anecdotes about how the book made them feel. They don't draw comparisons to Dostoevsky or their own divorce. They tell you what the book is about and whether you should read it, and then they move on to the next one like a factory worker on a conveyor belt. There's something almost noble about this assembly-line approach to criticism. It's not art, but neither is reviewing 10,000 books a year. The score reflects that this review accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do — it's just that what it sets out to do is the absolute minimum.